Educational reforms and standards have been a topic of public debate for decades, with the latest go-round being the State Common Core Curriculum Standards. But time and again those reforms have failed, and each set of standards, no matter how new and different, has had little impact on improving student achievement. Why? The textbooks. Textbooks…

Neal Frey reads textbooks for a living, a job he finds singularly fulfilling. For more than two decades, he had labored on behalf of Educational Research Analysts, a conservative Christian textbook-reviewing organization in Longview, Texas, founded by the famously outspoken husband-and-wife team of Mel Gabler and Norma Gabler. Since the early…

In this article, the author talks about Neal Frey, who for more than two decades has labored on behalf of Educational Research Analysts, a conservative Christian textbook-reviewing organization in Longview, Texas that was founded by the famously outspoken husband-and-wife team of Mel and Norma Gabler. When Mr. Gabler died at the age of 89, and…